The Once and Future Spy: A Novel

Summary

In this espionage classic by the New York Times bestselling author of The Company, two CIA operatives—one with something to hide, the other with something to prove—face off when a top-secret scheme is exposed.

The most elite levels of the CIA's Counterintelligence unit are on the verge of pulling off an operation so huge it will change global politics—and so secret that it has no paper trail. But the operation's organizer, Roger Wanamaker, has evidence that the plan has sprung a leak. Now it is a deadly race against time to "walk back the cat"—isolate the leak and plug it—before the scheme is exposed and an international conflict is ignited.

Meanwhile analyst Silas Sibley—nicknamed "The Weeder" due to his talent for parsing intelligence with experimental computer technology—has uncovered information no one was ever meant to find. Now he has to decide what to do with it: expose the unfolding atrocity, even if it means cutting the knees out from the intelligence agency he works for and has, up until now, believed in? Or is there some other solution? Clinging fiercely to the legacy of his ancestor American Revolutionary war hero Nathan Hale, the Weeder takes matters into his own hands. Surprising and complex, this psychological deep dive into obsession, loyalty, and history, poses the question: Whose truth should be believed?